Stinker's Return Read online

  PAMELA F. SERVICE

  DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  MINEOLA, NEW YORK

  Copyright

  Copyright © 1993 by Pamela F. Service

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in 1993.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Service, Pamela F., author.

  Title: Stinker’s return / Pamela F. Service.

  Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, Inc., 2018. | “Stinker’s Return, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2018, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in 1993.” | Sequel to: Stinker from space. | Summary: Alien agent Tsynq Yr, still inhabiting the body of a skunk, returns to Earth and enlists Jonathan and Karen’s help in finding a souvenir from Washington, D.C., for a threatening space despot.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017034849| ISBN 9780486818870 (paperback) | ISBN 048681887X

  Subjects: | CYAC: Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. | Skunks—Fiction. | Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. | Science fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Science Fiction. | JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / Nocturnal. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S4885 Su 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034849

  Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

  81887X01 2018

  www.doverpublications.com

  for The McKelvey Room Bunch

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1 Presidential Audience

  2 The High Gym of Twak

  3 Troubles

  4 Old Friends

  5 Not Your Average Trip

  6 Tourists

  7 Something Very Earth

  8 Take Me to Your Leader

  9 A Tale of Two Ships

  10 New Directions

  11 Like in the Movies

  12 Over the Rainbow

  Prologue

  The creaking of the porch swing mixed with the chirping of insects. Sitting side by side, Jonathan and Karen watched evening creep into the yard. A firefly flickered in the lilacs, another in the shade of the apple tree. A third wavered upward into the deepening blue sky to join the first faint stars.

  It’s beautiful, Karen thought.

  It’s peaceful.

  It’s incredibly boring!

  Suddenly the yard exploded with barking: happy, frantic barking. Sancho, Karen’s cocker spaniel, burst from the lilac bush chasing an animal. A black-and-white animal. A skunk!

  With happy squeals, Karen and Jonathan jumped to their feet and in two bounds were off the porch onto the lawn. Then they stopped short, their smiles fading.

  The skunk was standing stiffly still. Baring its teeth, it hissed at Sancho. The dog barked in confused little yips. Slowly the skunk raised its tail.

  “Wrong skunk!” Karen yelled. “Here, Sancho! Quick, boy!”

  Whimpering, the dog turned and ran toward them, and all three dashed onto the porch. On the lawn, the skunk slowly lowered its tail. With a final glance their way, it trotted back into the bushes.

  “Whew!” Jonathan said. “If we don’t get over thinking that every wild skunk might be Stinker, we’re in for a majorly stinky life.”

  Kneeling down, Karen was patting her shivering dog. “Well, he did say he might come back. It’s not our fault all skunks look pretty much alike.”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. He gave an angry kick to the porch swing, setting it jiggling. “A lot of things aren’t our fault, but they make life stink just the same.”

  “You can say that again,” Karen agreed, rubbing Sancho’s ears. “Here two kids who didn’t even like each other last year have had the most incredibly cool adventure ever, and bigwigs from NASA and the Pentagon tell everyone it’s a lie or a hoax.”

  Jonathan plunked himself back on the swing. “Right. I mean, the press and TV people were here. They saw all those alien Zarnk with their clattery pole legs. They saw how Stinker and his army of skunks destroyed them with skunk spray. They even saw all the skunks climb into the hijacked space shuttle and take off. And then those government guys don’t let the press use any of it after those first live TV shots. They pour on a bunch of garbage, saying it’s a hoax and a danger to national security. Give me a break!”

  “Well, garbage or not, they managed to convince everyone at school we’re a couple of lying troublemakers.”

  “That’s for sure,” Jonathan said, kicking idly at Sancho’s chew-bone. “The way other kids treat us now, we might as well have the plague. I mean, it would have been hard enough convincing people that this crash-landed alien took over a skunk body and talked into our minds. But after the government people got through, no one would believe us if we said the sky is blue.”

  Karen nodded. “And then they had the nerve to question us for hours about what we learned from Stinker—about his weapons and spaceship and stuff. Their cover-up pretty well wrecked our lives, and they still expect us to help them with information we don’t even have. And it won’t be any better once school starts again next fall. For the rest of our lives, the world will brand us as a couple of lying weirdo freaks.”

  Angrily, Jonathan stood up and threw Sancho’s chew-bone onto the lawn. The dog looked hesitantly into the gathering shadows, then scampered down after it.

  “Which just goes to show,” Jonathan said, “that life can stink even when you don’t have a skunk in it.”

  1

  Presidential Audience

  Tsynq Yr’s skunk nose twitched nervously. In many ways he was happy with his current body, but just now he would have preferred something more impressive. It was not often that an ordinary Sylon Space Corpsman had a private interview with the president of the Sylon Confederacy. He was scared witless.

  With his black-and-white plume of a tail spread proudly behind him, Tsynq Yr hoped he looked confident and dignified. The others in the waiting room ignored him.

  He tried to imagine what this meeting would be like. No doubt the president would be full of praise. After all he, Tsynq Yr, had brought back that vital information about the planned Zarnk attack. As a result of that unexpected stop at a little out-of-the-way planet, he had also brought back a shipload of animals that have a natural defense against Zarnk, a disintegrating spray, unknown to the Sylons. Now several colonies of these animals had been set up and were happily reproducing themselves. What a boon they’d be on Sylon worlds near the Zarnk border.

  This body of his had been plenty useful while arranging that. Tsynq Yr tried to sit up taller and ignore the Sylon next to him whose current body looked like a huge scaly burrito.

  He wondered what the president would look like. The only time he’d seen the president before, at a ceremony, he’d been in the body of an elderly Trith. That had been a while ago, so he’d probably moved into something else by now. What would be a useful body for the leader of one of the biggest interstellar governments in the galaxy?

  Tsynq Yr’s thoughts jolted to a stop as the receptionist called him. Trying to hold his tail in a confident arch, he waddled into the president’s office.

  Blinking in the bright bluish light, he looked around the large room. In its center stood an oval desk. Behind it spread a cluster of silver rods like a frozen bush, a “chair” for the creature floating upon it. A Nralshi, Tsynq Yr realized. Not a very practical body for a life of action, but for someone who spends most of the time thinking and giving orders, it was ideal.

  “Greetings, Honored President,�
� Tsynq Yr thought toward the chair’s filmy occupant.

  “Greetings to you, Field Operator Tsynq Yr,” came the replying thought. The blue-green draperies floating around the body’s core waved gently as if in an ocean current. Then they swirled in slightly, and the glowing core shot its light forward. Tsynq Yr felt himself bathed in a cool blue glow.

  “So that is what the remarkable creatures you brought back look like.”

  “Yes, Excellency. The dominant species on that planet is bipedal while those on the next rung are quadrupedal or aquatic.”

  Wisps of blue green flicked impatiently. “Yes, yes, I am familiar with the reports. Yours and . . . the others.”

  “Others?” Tsynq Yr questioned.

  “More reports than you can imagine!” The floating draperies trembled angrily. “What am I to do with you? A maverick troublemaker of the first order, it seems. Brilliant, daring, and absolutely disastrous!”

  “Uh . . . I don’t . . .”

  “In one operation you save us from a Zarnk attack and secure a new secret weapon, but at the same time you drag us to the brink of war somewhere else.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “That remote little planet you ‘discovered’ was in fact well within Twak territory.”

  “I didn’t . . .”

  The tendrils tightened, then loosened in a sigh. “I know. You were escaping along the dimensional boundary, lost control, and reappeared there. An accident, but it still was within the Twakish Amalgam.”

  “I apologize, Excellency, for not understanding the true significance of this, but I’ve never had much dealings with the Twak.”

  “That is because the Twak don’t want anyone having dealings with them. The Twak are, to say the least, strange. They are eccentric, greedy, reclusive, lazy, and very possessive. What’s worse, they are, when they feel like it, very, very dangerous.”

  The president’s filmy extremities had tightened into a dense cloud. “Twakish territory touches ours at several points. The High Gyrn of Twak is now threatening to destroy our border posts if we do not make up for the damage that we—no, that you caused.”

  The president was not the least bit transparent now. He throbbed a solid angry blue.

  Tsynq Yr’s stubby legs were trembling. “But all I did was . . .”

  “All you did was enter Twakish territory without permission, remove several hundred animals from a developing planet, and steal the dominant species’ most advanced space vessel. The High Gyrn considers that very close to an act of war. And let me tell you, the Twak may be lazy, but they delight in inventions and they have invented some truly dreadful weapons.”

  Tsynq Yr’s legs gave out totally and he plopped onto the floor. “I . . . I am sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  With a sigh, the president rippled himself loose again. Blue-green film floated around the chair. “No, your type never means to cause trouble. You do it by instinct. But now you have a chance to get us out of this by instinct. The High Gyrn says that if we don’t want our bases destroyed, we can give the same ‘creature’ who caused this mess the chance to make up for it.”

  “Meaning me?” Tsynq Yr asked, lying flat and ruglike on the floor.

  “Meaning we are sending you to the High Gyrn of Twak for further instructions.”

  Feeling that already he was as good as eaten and digested, Tsynq Yr dragged himself to his feet and tried to look noble. “Yes, Excellency, I understand. Should I, do you think, change bodies first?”

  The president wafted free of the chair and floated around the little skunk, faint streamers trailing behind the glowing core. “No, we don’t want to appear threatening, and I cannot imagine a body that appears less threatening than that one. But don’t even think of trying that built-in chemical spray on the Twak.” Then came a wry laugh. “It probably wouldn’t work anyway.”

  “Understood, Excellency. When am I to leave?”

  “Immediately,” snapped the reply, as the president swooped back to his chair. “I do have a few other problems in running this Confederacy besides the ones you have created.”

  Mentally mumbling apologies, Tsynq Yr turned and was scuttling out when a parting presidential thought reached him. “If you live through this, Corpsman, do visit me again. You still are owed some rewards, you know.”

  As Tsynq Yr hurried through the waiting room he tried not to let his tail drag. But his thoughts were not cheery. “Rewards—oh, right. If I live through this. Why did I choose to go into the Space Corps? Think of all the jobs and all the species in the universe. I could have moved into the body of a Bulga gardener and spent a long, happy life tending mushrooms.”

  Outside the presidential offices he caught a flittership, wrapped his tail around him for comfort, and headed to the spaceport.

  2

  The High Gym of Twak

  From space, the planet Twak was a yellow-orange ball. There were no oceans, but its surface was gouged by long green lakes, and here and there Tsynq Yr caught the glint of a city. As Twak Space Central had instructed, he left the Earth shuttle he’d been towing in the planet’s orbit and piloted his small Sylon ship toward the capital city.

  During the trip he had been learning what he could about the Twak. By all accounts they were just plain odd. They loosely controlled thousands of star systems but didn’t do anything with them except keep outsiders away, encourage trade among the worlds, and collect various oddments from them. They didn’t get out much, and left most of their government duties to subject species. The average Twak spent its time thinking, collecting things, and eating. It was the eating part that worried Tsynq Yr.

  At the Twakish spaceport, his ship was met by a peculiar little trolley. It had three round open-air cars—red, yellow, and green—that ran on big blue balloon tires. What pulled it was a jointed mechanical animal with six legs.

  Making little tooting sounds, the trolley carried Tsynq Yr past buildings of all shapes and colors. A huge upside-down yellow pyramid towered over a building that looked like a fat green candle with lots of drips. Here and there Tsynq Yr glimpsed what he thought must be Twaks—large wispy lumps of hair.

  The trolley took him through tunnels, up ramps, and over bridges until he realized he was now inside some huge building. He rolled through rooms of different shapes and sizes, some empty, some full of things. All sorts of things.

  One room was lined with shelves and ledges all holding mechanical devices. Some ticked, some whistled, some flashed, and some tossed balls back and forth. Some seemed to work by steam, others by clockwork, and yet others by antigravity. And none seemed to be doing anything worth doing.

  Another room was crammed with statues, big and small, representing all sorts of species. The room next to it held devices that produced what Tsynq Yr guessed was supposed to be music. The clashing mix of different tunes, rhythms, squeaks, booms, and squeals set his fur on edge. After that came a room overflowing with marbles. A force field held these little balls back from the trolley’s path in great cliffs, but even so, hundreds of colored spheres rolled and bounced out of their way as the trolley chugged through.

  “Eccentric” is hardly the word, Tsynq Yr thought, as they entered a room filled with things that seemed to have nothing at all to do with one another. At the center of the room the trolley suddenly stopped beside a bed of nails, in the middle of which stretched a tangled mass of yellowish white hair. A Twak?

  It didn’t move, it didn’t say anything. Hesitantly, Tsynq Yr stepped from the trolley, which lazily rolled away. Facing the hairy thing, he sat down, wrapped his tail around him, and thought politely, “Hello.”

  The thought that boomed back into his mind nearly bowled him over. “Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to Twak. Don’t have many visitors, you know. Don’t want many visitors. But you are different, little Sylon. You have got some things to set right, right?”

  “Uh, yes. Perhaps I do. May I ask if I have the honor to be addressing the High Gyrn of Twak?”

  “You may.
Yes, you may.”

  “Am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  “Addressing the High Gyrn,” Tsynq Yr said, trying to keep calm.

  “Indeed you are. What did you think, silly creature? All the others are far too busy with things to bother themselves running this place. That’s my job, High Gyrning. Running this bunch of planets—and keeping outsiders from making trouble.”

  Tsynq Yr cringed at the threatening tone. “I am truly sorry. I didn’t mean to make any trouble.”

  “Why should I bother with what some Sylon did or did not mean? What I am bothered by is what bothers me. People coming where they are not invited and snatching away a shipload of Twakish subjects, that bothers me. For that matter, Sylons bother me, too—can’t even decide on your shapes. By the way, is that one of the native animals you’re in?”

  “Y . . . yes, it is, but I just borrowed it. When I get a chance I could give it back and move into something else.”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you. And you can keep the others, too. Really quite clever of you to find a spray that wastes Zarnk. If there’s one thing I hate worse than Sylon, it’s Zarnk. Gross, nasty, mean things.”

  Tsynq Yr felt his mind spinning. “So you don’t mind me taking the skunks after all?”

  “Of course I mind, even if it was a smashing good idea. Now you’ll just have to make up for it, that’s all.”

  “Uh, yes. How?”

  “Well, first, you do have to take back their spaceship. You know, I hardly know a thing about that planet—Earth, is it? It’s so far on the fringes, it’s really too much of a bother for any of us to visit. Why, we haven’t even got anything from there for our collections. Except recordings, of course.”

  “Recordings?”

  “Yes, some years ago they started broadcasting entertainment programs. And jolly entertaining they are, too. Look, here’s my library.”

  The hair ball shrugged sideways and bumped against a console screen. The screen lit up with a rolling list of titles in Earth languages. Tsynq Yr recognized several from seeing them on Karen’s TV.